Ever since the collapse of Word of Redemption almost 3/4 of a year ago, I've not seriously tried raiding much. I had a few half-ass guilds (no offense to them, just that I had terrible luck) and then a bad schedule for raiding. The furthest I've ever killed are Hydross, Lurker, Solarian, and T4 content.

Even my gear barely shows this. My ret gear is almost entirely honor, arena, badge, and crafted gear with a couple heroic pieces and a single raid piece: DPS wrists from HKM. Except for Scale of the Sands rep for Hyjal trash, my armory doesn't even reflect kills past HKM. My prot gear shows that I killed the Eagle boss in ZA and TK trash. My holy gear doesn't even get outside of Kara except for an ungemmed, unenchanted shield from Dragonhawk in ZA which I don't use.

I don't consider myself a noob, but looking at my actual gear and experience, what else could be concluded?

In unrelated news, I'm fucking sick of Blizzard putting blue/yellow gems on DPS gear. The yellow I don't mind too much since crit isn't bad, but I'm sick of skipping having to pick between skipping useful socket bonuses and wasting gem value on stam. Even casters don't get so fucked on blue gems; mana/5 and spirit are useful for certain classes and even warlocks at least want stam. I suppose there's no real way to add melee regen since that would probably end up being way better than any other stat since rage and energy are major limiters compared to mana.

everyone was a noob once and will be again, unless you plan on only ever playing games you've got good at. Personally I wouldn't worry about the state of your items; in my experience if you start caring about something related to WoW (which I have done on several occasions) that's the best time to phone a real life friend and invite them out for a pint / underage equivalent. After all, it's only a game... only the best game in the world ofc!